Minor setback

There are certain benefits to living in a rental property, as long as you have a nice landlord. We lost our refrigerator today and had a new one within 6 hours. Unfortunately, it'd been slowly getting warmer, so we lost some meat and a gallon of milk.

Here's a photo for comparison:


It's not the most energy efficient new unit, but it'll probably save us a bundle in energy costs over the year over that one. The estimate is that it was 14 years old. o.O

Now to buy some LED lights and a solar jar from ThinkGeek....

Where we start

Courtesy http://www.ncnnetwork.com/

How did we get in so much debt to begin with? I'm not the one who was managing finances, and my husband says he doesn't really know, either. <---- (scary, that!)

$11000 is my student loan. DH has about $4500 (I think). We have about $6000 negative equity from the car.

That's a lot of junk to make up the rest. I'm sure some of it was home improvements. My hospital bill probably went on a card "to be paid off later."

Let me tell ya, paying stuff off later isn't all it's cracked up to be. But we're putting our nose to the grindstone and doing it.

So far, we sold our car back to the dealer, are using a borrowed vehicle, DH takes the bus to work and back, we eat as cheaply as we can (when we don't succumb to eating out), and we constantly evaluation whether we really *need* something - whether we've bought it already or not!

This is our journey.

Inspiration

Frugality is tough. Sometimes it feels like we're doing too much with one hand and saving too tight with the other. It is really tough to wait.

Patience is a virtue.

"Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.'" Hebrews 13:5

"But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction." 1 Timothy 6:6-9

Catching Everyone Up

Afraid to talk about money? Letting one spouse handle it while the other asks for the okay?

That's a recipe for where we are right now, my friends - in debt. I wish I could show you how much debt, but my chart was deleted from NCN. I used a questionable name, and would redo it, but I don't remember the exact figure of where we are right now.

I suppose I can estimate high and go from there.